Magic Monday

[ecosophia]

It's almost midnight, so we can proceed with a new Magic Monday. Ask me anything about occultism and I'll do my best to answer it. With certain exceptions, any question received by midnight Monday Eastern time will get an answer. Please note:  Any question received after then will not get an answer, and in fact will just be deleted. (I've been getting an increasing number of people trying to post after these are closed, so will have to draw a harder line than before.) If you're in a hurry, or suspect you may be the 143,916th person to ask a question, please check out the very rough version 1.0 of The Magic Monday FAQ here. Also: I will not be putting through or answering any more questions about practicing magic around children. I've answered those in simple declarative sentences in the FAQ. If you read the FAQ and don't think your question has been answered, read it again. If that doesn't help, consider remedial reading classes; yes, it really is as simple and straightforward as the FAQ says. 

The picture?  I'm working my way through photos of my lineage, focusing on the teachers whose work has influenced me and the teachers who influenced them in turn.  Like Allan Bennett, who we discussed last week, this week's honoree was a teacher of Aleister Crowley. George Cecil Jones was the man who introduced Crowley to the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, and later on helped Crowley found the Argenteum Astrum (Order of the Silver Star, or A∴A∴), the first of the two magical orders the Not-so-great Beast headed during his lifetime. (The other, the Ordo Templi Orientis or OTO, will be discussed next week.) Jones was a working chemist and metallurgist as well as a serious student of the occult. He practiced the magical virtue of silence more effectively than most of his contemporaries, however, and very little seems to be known about him.

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With that said, have at it!

***This Magic Monday is now closed. See you next week!***

Comments

Re: "Hail Idun" Variants, and Any Questions of Which to Ask More?

[mek_kladenets]

In all honesty this project has been incredibly inspirational ever since you first announced that you were working on it.

A few notes:
These are lovely
You seem well learned on Germanic and Anglo-Saxon Literary conventions, but a few I would offer to spice things up and make the lines flow more readily is making use of Sprung Rhythm which organizes lines by a number of feet but an indeterminate number of syllables. Gerard Manley Hopkins practiced with it extensively and claimed to have discovered it in nursey rhymes, but to my knowledge, not a lot of people have taken up the torch. This is a shame because it is perfect for making language sound more... raw, for lack of a better term


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprung_rhythm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Germanic_and_Latinate_equivalents_in_English

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_purism_in_English

Something else that makes English poetry sing is varied repetition. I don't know why this developed, though I have a few guesses which are not particularly relevant. If you have the option to repeat a word or use a synonym, do the latter. There are places for literal repetition, but the soft repetition of multiple similar names help the reader or the faithful form deep associations about what is being expanded upon.

Additionally, I know you've looked deeply into the Western Christian Literature on the Rosary. The Christian East has no such tradition to speak of, though there is a so-called rule of St. Seraphim which is a plagiarized rosary. The "Hail Mary" in the Greek, Syriac, and Slavonic speaking east may be a source of inspiration:

Rejoice Virgin Mother of God,
Mary full of Grace, the Lord is with Thee
Blessed art Thou amongst women
and Blessed is the fruit of thy womb for Thou hast given birth
+ To Christ the Savior, the Redeemer of our Souls.

Which compares thusly:

Hail Mary, full of grace
The Lord is with Thee
Blessed art thou amongst women
and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.

Holy Mary
Mother of God
Pray for us sinners
Now and in the hour of our death
Amen.

This being said, here are some suggestions without moving too much around.
I've also included the scansion of your meter in case you'd like to toy with that later.

Way 1

//_ Hail Idun,
/__/ Yggdrasil's Seed,
/__/_ Life-giving Lady,
/__/ Love-giving *Queen*.

/_/_ Blessed Idun,
/___/_ *Goddess ale-giving,*
/__/_ *Blossom of Healing,*
/_/_/ Quench our thirst for thee.

Way 2

//_ Hail Idun,
//__ Heart's Opener,
/__/_ Lady love-giving,
/__/_ *Goddess* life-giving.

/_/ Bless us with
/_/ Blissful drink,
/_/_ Ale age-helping,
/_/__ Mead mind-opening.

Way 3

//_ Hail Idun,
//__ Heart Gladdener,
/__/_ *Lady love-giving,*
_/_/__ *Beloved life-giver.*

/_/_ Blissful Idun,
/__ Bless us with *quenched*
/_/_ Thirst with thanks, *and*
/_/__/_ Soul awakened to seeking.

Re: "Hail Idun" Variants, and Any Questions of Which to Ask More?

[jprussell]

Wow, thanks so much for your kind words, the resources, and most of all for the variants!

1) Sprung rhythm sounds promising! I'll have to see if I can get it to play nice with the strict(ish) stressed-syllable count requirements of Galdralag I'm using here. If not, it will almost certainly be helpful in more flexible meters like Anglo-Saxon Long Lines.

2) The varied repetition is a good suggestion, and one that these versions made insufficient use of, it seems. In Galdralag, there's a tendency, but not a requirement, for the last two lines to be variations of each other, sometimes with as little as one word changed, and the idea of changing *only* a synonym might be productive.

3) Thank you for the Eastern "versions" - I had encountered brief mention of them, hadn't looked to them as directly for inspiration, though maybe I should.

4) Thank you *very much* for the scansion and the suggestions. To make sure I'm reading your scansion correctly, you're using "/" for a stressed syllable and "_" for an un/less-stressed syllable?

Before this, I hadn't really written any poetry since some terrible blank verse in high school, so it's been a lot of fun to learn more and suggestions about techniques to consider are most welcome.

Thanks again,
Jeff

Re: "Hail Idun" Variants, and Any Questions of Which to Ask More?

[mek_kladenets]

Happy to help!
Another good source for inspiration might be Thomas Taylor's translation of the Orphic Hymns. The structure of the hymns is in many cases just a list of epithets, so plenty to get inspired by :D

As far as the scansion is concerned, yes, I used / for stressed and _ for unstressed. I made some assumptions about names and titles, so there may be some inaccuracies.

Blank verse and free verse are what most people start with because there are many who look down on traditional forms. However, those forms, just like ritual structure help to contain and direct emotion in a way that more elastic forms cannot.
Best of luck!
-mek